City Council sends eminent domain amendment to April ballot

COLUMBIA — On April 3, voters will have their say on the city's eminent domain power.

The Columbia City Council unanimously approved a charter amendment Monday night that prevents the city from exercising eminent domain for economic development with the intention of transferring the property to private entities.

The amendment stemmed from public discussion regarding a proposed enhanced enterprise zone, or EEZ, Sixth Ward Councilwoman Barbara Hoppe said during the meeting.

An EEZ is a state-run program that provides tax incentives to spark expansion of existing businesses or manufacturing companies and the development of new small businesses. To apply to the state for the creation of an EEZ, the proposed area must be declared "blighted or possessing conditions that lead to blight."

"Blight greases the wheels, as they say, for eminent domain," Monta Welch, head of A People's Visioning and an EEZ opponent, said before the meeting.

In response to the public dissatisfaction, Hoppe asked city staff about a possible amendment to the city's charter that limits the use of eminent domain for economic development, according to city documents. She cited the recent Supreme Court case on eminent domain, Kelo v. New London, as reason to further articulate the city's power.

The amendment's language, however, created concern that the council was laying out a process for exercising eminent domain — something the council didn't intend, Second Ward Councilman Michael Trapp said in an interview.

"We removed it to readdress the language," Fifth Ward councilwoman Helen Anthony said at the meeting. "Now it's more narrowly construed."

Trapp said he thought the amendment provided no substantive change to the dialogue on EEZ.

"It's a law about a feeling," Trapp said. "Nobody likes (eminent domain) on the left, nobody likes it on the right. Eminent domain tramples individual rights except in its most narrow use."

Trapp referred to the language added to the state's EEZ charter last spring which specifies that blight designations for EEZs cannot be used "to meet the conditions for blight under any other statute of the state," including eminent domain.

Mike Brooks, director of Regional Economic Development Inc., the public-private partnership pushing for an EEZ, said that everything he’s ascertained from the city’s legal counsel indicates no connection between the blight designation required for EEZ and the blight designation used for eminent domain.

“The only thing they have in common is the word ‘blight,’” Brooks said.